The Deeply Kooky Saga of the Quazy Quaids

The Quaids may be insane, but you can't call them fickle. Their marriage has survived more than two decades, long periods without a real home, and multiple arrests. Evi is appalled by the fecklessness of the entertainment business. "Couples in Hollywood, they just drop each other at a moment's notice," she told GQ last month, as she picked through a plate of seafood in a Vancouver restaurant. "They know nothing of loyalty, of support. They just decide they're not into each other. I can't understand that."

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According to Evi, the trouble began in earnest about three years ago after she and Randy decided "we weren't going to do movies just for money." That's when the campaign against them began, she says: "The people who were using us, defrauding us, sucking money out of us, they freaked. They saw the golden goose disappearing, that's when they started pursuing us. They're swabbing our DNA. I mean, it's crazy. They have a huge stake in this. We were supporting an enormous number of people." In a lengthy and bizarre legal filing, which never went anywhere because their check for the court fees bounced, the Quaids accused Lloyd Braun, one of Hollywood's most powerful ecutives, of taking out unauthorized loans in their names; Braun flatly denies this. They also assert that Los Angles-based City National Bank "stole" Randy's life-insurance policy and stands to gain from Randy's death. The bank calls both accusations "absurd."

Photo: AP Photo

Evi met Randy when she was a 24-year-old assistant on Bloodhounds of Broadway, one of Madonna's classic bombs; she was hired to drive Quaid to and from the set, but her father once told People magazine that she never had the money for the toll or a clue where she was going. They were engaged a few weeks later.

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Dennis Quaid was the best man at Randy's 1989 wedding to Evi (legal name: Eugenia Motolanez), at the San Ysidro Ranch (the same fancy inn where they later skipped out on the $10,000 bill), but the brothers are not speaking these days, says Evi. Dennis was devastated when his ex-wife Meg Ryan reportedly had an affair with Russell Crowe that led to the dissolution of her marriage, but Evi understood the attraction. Crowe is "a lot like Randy when you think about it," she says.

Photo: Retna Ltd.

The tabloids have reported that the Quaids adopted two children, Kaki and Charlotte. Where are they? "I just put that in IMDB [the online movie database] to confuse people, to put them on the wrong track," Evi says. "I don't have any children. But I do have seven frozen embryos. They're in L.A. Maybe we could fly them up here in a little frozen pod or something."

Photo: Lee Celano/WireImage

Evi has her bizarre suspicions about Dennis's wife, Kimberly, with whom he had twins, via a surrogate in 2007. "I think she's a transsexual," she says. "How do you figure that out—is it the Adam's apple, the hands? Those are the things you can't change."

Photo: Getty Images

Evi prides herself on being a fashion chameleon: "I've shaved my head like four times this year. It re-grows really amazingly. This jacket? Yves Saint Laurent. The purse? It's Prada. I got in a few months ago when we were in Las Vegas, but the zipper is already broken. I used to love clothes. I'm good with them."

Photo: Precidio County Sheriff's Office

Evi, who is of Russian and Greek descent, has always considered herself an artist. In the 1980s she modeled a bit for Helmut Newton. In one shot she treasures, she's lying nearly naked across a bed with a gun in her hand.

Photo: L. Cohen/WireImage

Her 1999 directorial debut carries the now ironic title of The Debtors. An attempt at screwball comedy, the film starred Michael Caine and Randy and was financed by Charles Simonyi, Microsoft's chief software engineer. Simonyi sued the Quaids over ownership of the film, which landed the couple in bankruptcy court in 2000.

Photo: imdb.com

Evi concedes she isn't very good with the couple's money, which she has always managed. "We don't really care about money," she says. "I'm a minimalist. We travel light. Some of our possessions are with us, some of it the sheriffs have. I could be happy picking apples while Randy stays in the car reading. We were never rich. It was always $750,000 here, $1.2 million there. The only year I remember really being rich was 1995."

Photo: Ron Galella/WireImage

In 2009, Evi plunked down a reported $60,000 for a commercial building in the art mecca of Marfa, Texas, a site chosen for the museum she planned honoring Randy's career. "I knew Randy had a lot of lessons to pass on to kids from Texas. He was just a regular kid who came to Hollywood. If it wasn't for him, Dennis would never have had the courage. If Randy could show just one kid that it's possible, that would be worth it. I'll give you one example of what would be cool in the museum: a script marked up by Randy. I asked him recently why he did it the way he did and he said he learned it from Nicholson on The Last Detail. And recently I read that Nicholson learned it from Béla Lugosi. Now don't you think people would want to see that?"

Photo: Michael Bezjian/WireImage

Canada may not be the Quaids' final destination. They have a back-up plan if the government decides that Randy is an undesirable. "When Randy and I were in the pokey, we talked about going from here to Siberia. How do you get to Siberia from Canada? I mean, I think there's a body of water you need to get over. I bet we could get a boat. How did Diane Keaton do it in Reds?"

Photo: Jemal Countess/WireImage

One thing Evi is sure of: She will be with Randy forever. "I won't let them separate us. No way. I scream when they try. That's one thing that's never going to happen. They're going to have to take me down in the street before that happens."

The Deeply Kooky Saga of the Quazy Quaids

What the hell's up with Randy Quaid and his wife Evi? We sent Nancy Hass to Vancouver, where the Quaids are on the lam, to find out. She never did meet Randy, but she did talk to Evi. And boy, can Evi talk

The Quaids may be insane, but you can't call them fickle. Their marriage has survived more than two decades, long periods without a real home, and multiple arrests. Evi is appalled by the fecklessness of the entertainment business. "Couples in Hollywood, they just drop each other at a moment's notice," she told GQ last month, as she picked through a plate of seafood in a Vancouver restaurant. "They know nothing of loyalty, of support. They just decide they're not into each other. I can't understand that."